For anyone who attended the “Heavy Duty Powertrains of the Future” session that kicked off SOLD! at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week (HDAW) Tuesday looking for a definitive answer as to what commercial trucking equipment will look like in 20 years, Cummins’ Saad Malik was quick to tell the audience the answer they sought didn’t exist.
Trucking is changing. It’s always changing. The new technologies, powertrains and fuels becoming available to truck buyers could upend the diesel industry one day. But Malik says that day isn’t tomorrow. Or a year from now. Or even 2025.
He also says if you asked he or his fellow panelists to guess how (and when) the market will eventually shift, the five of them would have “10 different answers … and everything we predict is going to be wrong.”
Long story short, the panelists admitted powertrains are going to evolve, but gradually. Trucking will adopt at the pace its customers accept. New powertrains will gain acceptance in duty cycles and equipment where they make financial sense and offer real TCO advantages. Government mandates and regulations, developed by the EPA or CARB, will influence the market but will not be the genesis for every industry shift.
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The panel says when medium- and heavy-duty truck buyers eventually start buying these new powertrains en masse, it will be because they want to buy them.
“There isn’t a silver bullet on which engine or technology is going to win in the end,” says Malik, who joined Cummins through its purchase of Meritor. “They will all have areas where they make sense.”
